The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson
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The Master of Ballantrae
A Winter's Tale




To Sir Percy Florence and Lady Shelley


Here is a tale which extends over many years and travels into many
countries.  By a peculiar fitness of circumstance the writer began,
continued it, and concluded it among distant and diverse scenes.
Above all, he was much upon the sea.  The character and fortune of
the fraternal enemies, the hall and shrubbery of Durrisdeer, the
problem of Mackellar's homespun and how to shape it for superior
flights; these were his company on deck in many star-reflecting
harbours, ran often in his mind at sea to the tune of slatting
canvas, and were dismissed (something of the suddenest) on the
approach of squalls.  It is my hope that these surroundings of its
manufacture may to some degree find favour for my story with
seafarers and sea-lovers like yourselves.

And at least here is a dedication from a great way off:  written by
the loud shores of a subtropical island near upon ten thousand
miles from Boscombe Chine and Manor:  scenes which rise before me
as I write, along with the faces and voices of my friends.

Well, I am for the sea once more; no doubt Sir Percy also.  Let us
make the signal B. R. D.!

R. L. S.

WAIKIKI, May 17, 1889



PREFACE



Although an old, consistent exile, the editor of the following
pages revisits now and again the city of which he exults to be a
native; and there are few things more strange, more painful, or
more salutary, than such revisitations.  Outside, in foreign spots,
he comes by surprise and awakens more attention than he had
expected; in his own city, the relation is reversed, and he stands
amazed to be so little recollected.  Elsewhere he is refreshed to
see attractive faces, to remark possible friends; there he scouts
the long streets, with a pang at heart, for the faces and friends
that are no more.  Elsewhere he is delighted with the presence of
what is new, there tormented by the absence of what is old.
Elsewhere he is content to be his present self; there he is smitten
with an equal regret for what he once was and for what he once
hoped to be.

He was feeling all this dimly, as he drove from the station, on his
last visit; he was feeling it still as he alighted at the door of
his friend Mr. Johnstone Thomson, W.S., with whom he was to stay.
A hearty welcome, a face not altogether changed, a few words that
sounded of old days, a laugh provoked and shared, a glimpse in
passing of the snowy cloth and bright decanters and the Piranesis
on the dining-room wall, brought him to his bed-room with a
somewhat lightened cheer, and when he and Mr. Thomson sat down a
few minutes later, cheek by jowl, and pledged the past in a
preliminary bumper, he was already almost consoled, he had already
almost forgiven himself his two unpardonable errors, that he should
ever have left his native city, or ever returned to it.

"I have something quite in your way," said Mr. Thomson.  "I wished
to do honour to your arrival; because, my dear fellow, it is my own
youth that comes back along with you; in a very tattered and
withered state, to be sure, but - well! - all that's left of it."

"A great deal better than nothing," said the editor.  "But what is
this which is quite in my way?"

"I was coming to that," said Mr. Thomson:  "Fate has put it in my
power to honour your arrival with something really original by way
of dessert.  A mystery."

"A mystery?" I repeated.

"Yes," said his friend, "a mystery.  It may prove to be nothing,
and it may prove to be a great deal.  But in the meanwhile it is
truly mysterious, no eye having looked on it for near a hundred
years; it is highly genteel, for it treats of a titled family; and
it ought to be melodramatic, for (according to the superscription)
it is concerned with death."

"I think I rarely heard a more obscure or a more promising
annunciation," the other remarked.  "But what is It?"

"You remember my predecessor's, old Peter M'Brair's business?"

"I remember him acutely; he could not look at me without a pang of
reprobation, and he could not feel the pang without betraying it.
He was to me a man of a great historical interest, but the interest
was not returned."

"Ah well, we go beyond him," said Mr. Thomson.  "I daresay old
Peter knew as little about this as I do.  You see, I succeeded to a
prodigious accumulation of old law-papers and old tin boxes, some
of them of Peter's hoarding, some of his father's, John, first of
the dynasty, a great man in his day.  Among other collections, were
all the papers of the Durrisdeers."

"The Durrisdeers!" cried I.  "My dear fellow, these may be of the
greatest interest.  One of them was out in the '45; one had some
strange passages with the devil - you will find a note of it in
Law's MEMORIALS, I think; and there was an unexplained tragedy, I
know not what, much later, about a hundred years ago - "

"More than a hundred years ago," said Mr. Thomson.  "In 1783."

"How do you know that?  I mean some death."

"Yes, the lamentable deaths of my Lord Durrisdeer and his brother,
the Master of Ballantrae (attainted in the troubles)," said Mr.
Thomson with something the tone of a man quoting.  "Is that it?"

"To say truth," said I, "I have only seen some dim reference to the
things in memoirs; and heard some traditions dimmer still, through
my uncle (whom I think you knew).  My uncle lived when he was a boy
in the neighbourhood of St. Bride's; he has often told me of the
avenue closed up and grown over with grass, the great gates never
opened, the last lord and his old maid sister who lived in the back
parts of the house, a quiet, plain, poor, hum-drum couple it would
seem - but pathetic too, as the last of that stirring and brave
house - and, to the country folk, faintly terrible from some
deformed traditions."

"Yes," said Mr. Thomson.  "Henry Graeme Durie, the last lord, died
in 1820; his sister, the honourable Miss Katherine Durie, in '27;
so much I know; and by what I have been going over the last few
days, they were what you say, decent, quiet people and not rich.
To say truth, it was a letter of my lord's that put me on the
search for the packet we are going to open this evening.  Some
papers could not be found; and he wrote to Jack M'Brair suggesting
they might be among those sealed up by a Mr. Mackellar.  M'Brair
answered, that the papers in question were all in Mackellar's own
hand, all (as the writer understood) of a purely narrative
character; and besides, said he, 'I am bound not to open them
before the year 1889.'  You may fancy if these words struck me:  I
instituted a hunt through all the M'Brair repositories; and at last
hit upon that packet which (if you have had enough wine) I propose
to show you at once."

In the smoking-room, to which my host now led me, was a packet,
fastened with many seals and enclosed in a single sheet of strong
paper thus endorsed:


Papers relating to the lives and lamentable deaths of the late Lord
Durisdeer, and his elder brother James, commonly called Master of
Ballantrae, attainted in the troubles:  entrusted into the hands of
John M'Brair in the Lawnmarket of Edinburgh, W.S.; this 20th day of
September Anno Domini 1789; by him to be kept secret until the
revolution of one hundred years complete, or until the 20th day of
September 1889:  the same compiled and written by me, EPHRAIM
MACKELLAR,

For near forty years Land Steward on the estates of his Lordship.


As Mr. Thomson is a married man, I will not say what hour had
struck when we laid down the last of the following pages; but I
will give a few words of what ensued.

"Here," said Mr. Thomson, "is a novel ready to your hand:  all you
have to do is to work up the scenery, develop the characters, and
improve the style."

"My dear fellow," said I, "they are just the three things that I
would rather die than set my hand to.  It shall be published as it
stands."

"But it's so bald," objected Mr. Thomson.

"I believe there is nothing so noble as baldness," replied I, "and
I am sure there in nothing so interesting.  I would have all
literature bald, and all authors (if you like) but one."

"Well, well," add Mr. Thomson, "we shall see."



CHAPTER I. - SUMMARY OF EVENTS DURING THIS MASTER'S WANDERINGS.



The full truth of this odd matter is what the world has long been
looking for, and public curiosity is sure to welcome.  It so befell
that I was intimately mingled with the last years and history of
the house; and there does not live one man so able as myself to
make these matters plain, or so desirous to narrate them
faithfully.  I knew the Master; on many secret steps of his career
I have an authentic memoir in my hand; I sailed with him on his
last voyage almost alone; I made one upon that winter's journey of
which so many tales have gone abroad; and I was there at the man's
death.  As for my late Lord Durrisdeer, I served him and loved him
near twenty years; and thought more of him the more I knew of him.
Altogether, I think it not fit that so much evidence should perish;
the truth is a debt I owe my lord's memory; and I think my old
years will flow more smoothly, and my white hair lie quieter on the
pillow, when the debt is paid.

The Duries of Durrisdeer and Ballantrae were a strong family in the
south-west from the days of David First.  A rhyme still current in
the countryside -


Kittle folk are the Durrisdeers,
They ride wi' over mony spears -


bears the mark of its antiquity; and the name appears in another,
which common report attributes to Thomas of Ercildoune himself - I
cannot say how truly, and which some have applied - I dare not say
with how much justice - to the events of this narration:


Twa Duries in Durrisdeer,
Ane to tie and ane to ride,
An ill day for the groom
And a waur day for the bride.


Authentic history besides is filled with their exploits which (to
our modern eyes) seem not very commendable:  and the family
suffered its full share of those ups and downs to which the great
houses of Scotland have been ever liable.  But all these I pass
over, to come to that memorable year 1745, when the foundations of
this tragedy were laid.

At that time there dwelt a family of four persons in the house of
Durrisdeer, near St. Bride's, on the Solway shore; a chief hold of
their race since the Reformation.  My old lord, eighth of the name,
was not old in years, but he suffered prematurely from the
disabilities of age; his place was at the chimney side; there he
sat reading, in a lined gown, with few words for any man, and wry
words for none:  the model of an old retired housekeeper; and yet
his mind very well nourished with study, and reputed in the country
to be more cunning than he seemed.  The master of Ballantrae, James
in baptism, took from his father the love of serious reading; some
of his tact perhaps as well, but that which was only policy in the
father became black dissimulation in the son.  The face of his
behaviour was merely popular and wild:  he sat late at wine, later
at the cards; had the name in the country of "an unco man for the
lasses;" and was ever in the front of broils.  But for all he was
the first to go in, yet it was observed he was invariably the best
to come off; and his partners in mischief were usually alone to pay
the piper.  This luck or dexterity got him several ill-wishers, but
with the rest of the country, enhanced his reputation; so that
great things were looked for in his future, when he should have
gained more gravity.  One very black mark he had to his name; but
the matter was hushed up at the time, and so defaced by legends
before I came into those parts, that I scruple to set it down.  If
it was true, it was a horrid fact in one so young; and if false, it
was a horrid calumny.  I think it notable that he had always
vaunted himself quite implacable, and was taken at his word; so
that he had the addition among his neighbours of "an ill man to
cross."  Here was altogether a young nobleman (not yet twenty-four
in the year '45) who had made a figure in the country beyond his
time of life.  The less marvel if there were little heard of the
second son, Mr. Henry (my late Lord Durrisdeer), who was neither
very bad nor yet very able, but an honest, solid sort of lad like
many of his neighbours.  Little heard, I say; but indeed it was a
case of little spoken.  He was known among the salmon fishers in
the firth, for that was a sport that he assiduously followed; he
was an excellent good horse-doctor besides; and took a chief hand,
almost from a boy, in the management of the estates.  How hard a
part that was, in the situation of that family, none knows better
than myself; nor yet with how little colour of justice a man may
there acquire the reputation of a tyrant and a miser.  The fourth
person in the house was Miss Alison Graeme, a near kinswoman, an
orphan, and the heir to a considerable fortune which her father had
acquired in trade.  This money was loudly called for by my lord's
necessities; indeed the land was deeply mortgaged; and Miss Alison
was designed accordingly to be the Master's wife, gladly enough on
her side; with how much good-will on his, is another matter.  She
was a comely girl, and in those days very spirited and self-willed;
for the old lord having no daughter of his own, and my lady being
long dead, she had grown up as best she might.

To these four came the news of Prince Charlie's landing, and set
them presently by the ears.  My lord, like the chimney-keeper that
he was, was all for temporising.  Miss Alison held the other side,
because it appeared romantical; and the Master (though I have heard
they did not agree often) was for this once of her opinion.  The
adventure tempted him, as I conceive; he was tempted by the
opportunity to raise the fortunes of the house, and not less by the
hope of paying off his private liabilities, which were heavy beyond
all opinion.  As for Mr. Henry, it appears he said little enough at
first; his part came later on.  It took the three a whole day's
disputation, before they agreed to steer a middle course, one son
going forth to strike a blow for King James, my lord and the other
staying at home to keep in favour with King George.  Doubtless this
was my lord's decision; and, as is well known, it was the part
played by many considerable families.  But the one dispute settled,
another opened.  For my lord, Miss Alison, and Mr. Henry all held
the one view:  that it was the cadet's part to go out; and the
Master, what with restlessness and vanity, would at no rate consent
to stay at home.  My lord pleaded, Miss Alison wept, Mr. Henry was
very plain spoken:  all was of no avail.

"It is the direct heir of Durrisdeer that should ride by his King's
bridle," says the Master.

"If we were playing a manly part," says Mr. Henry, "there might be
sense in such talk.  But what are we doing?  Cheating at cards!"

"We are saving the house of Durrisdeer, Henry," his father said.

"And see, James," said Mr. Henry, "if I go, and the Prince has the
upper hand, it will be easy to make your peace with King James.
But if you go, and the expedition fails, we divide the right and
the title.  And what shall I be then?"

"You will be Lord Durrisdeer," said the Master.  "I put all I have
upon the table."

"I play at no such game," cries Mr. Henry.  "I shall be left in
such a situation as no man of sense and honour could endure.  I
shall be neither fish nor flesh!" he cried.  And a little after he
had another expression, plainer perhaps than he intended.  "It is
your duty to be here with my father," said he.  "You know well
enough you are the favourite."

"Ay?" said the Master.  "And there spoke Envy!  Would you trip up
my heels - Jacob?" said he, and dwelled upon the name maliciously.

Mr. Henry went and walked at the low end of the hall without reply;
for he had an excellent gift of silence.  Presently he came back.

"I am the cadet and I SHOULD go," said he.  "And my lord here in
the master, and he says I SHALL go.  What say ye to that, my
brother?"

"I say this, Harry," returned the Master, "that when very obstinate
folk are met, there are only two ways out:  Blows - and I think
none of us could care to go so far; or the arbitrament of chance -
and here is a guinea piece.  Will you stand by the toss of the
coin?"

"I will stand and fall by it," said Mr. Henry.  "Heads, I go;
shield, I stay."

The coin was spun, and it fell shield.  "So there is a lesson for
Jacob," says the Master.

"We shall live to repent of this," says Mr. Henry, and flung out of
the hall.

As for Miss Alison, she caught up that piece of gold which had just
sent her lover to the wars, and flung it clean through the family
shield in the great painted window.

"If you loved me as well as I love you, you would have stayed,"
cried she.

"'I could not love you, dear, so well, loved I not honour more,'"
sang the Master.

"Oh!" she cried, "you have no heart - I hope you may be killed!"
and she ran from the room, and in tears, to her own chamber.

It seems the Master turned to my lord with his most comical manner,
and says he, "This looks like a devil of a wife."

"I think you are a devil of a son to me," cried his father, "you
that have always been the favourite, to my shame be it spoken.
Never a good hour have I gotten of you, since you were born; no,
never one good hour," and repeated it again the third time.
Whether it was the Master's levity, or his insubordination, or Mr.
Henry's word about the favourite son, that had so much disturbed my
lord, I do not know; but I incline to think it was the last, for I
have it by all accounts that Mr. Henry was more made up to from
that hour.

Altogether it was in pretty ill blood with his family that the
Master rode to the North; which was the more sorrowful for others
to remember when it seemed too late.  By fear and favour he had
scraped together near upon a dozen men, principally tenants' sons;
they were all pretty full when they set forth, and rode up the hill
by the old abbey, roaring and singing, the white cockade in every
hat.  It was a desperate venture for so small a company to cross
the most of Scotland unsupported; and (what made folk think so the
more) even as that poor dozen was clattering up the hill, a great
ship of the king's navy, that could have brought them under with a
single boat, lay with her broad ensign streaming in the bay.  The
next afternoon, having given the Master a fair start, it was Mr.
Henry's turn; and he rode off, all by himself, to offer his sword
and carry letters from his father to King George's Government.
Miss Alison was shut in her room, and did little but weep, till
both were gone; only she stitched the cockade upon the Master's
hat, and (as John Paul told me) it was wetted with tears when he
carried it down to him.

In all that followed, Mr. Henry and my old lord were true to their
bargain.  That ever they accomplished anything is more than I could
learn; and that they were anyway strong on the king's side, more
than believe.  But they kept the letter of loyalty, corresponded
with my Lord President, sat still at home, and had little or no
commerce with the Master while that business lasted.  Nor was he,
on his side, more communicative.  Miss Alison, indeed, was always
sending him expresses, but I do not know if she had many answers.
Macconochie rode for her once, and found the highlanders before
Carlisle, and the Master riding by the Prince's side in high
favour; he took the letter (so Macconochie tells), opened it,
glanced it through with a mouth like a man whistling, and stuck it
in his belt, whence, on his horse passageing, it fell unregarded to
the ground.  It was Macconochie who picked it up; and he still kept
it, and indeed I have seen it in his hands.  News came to
Durrisdeer of course, by the common report, as it goes travelling
through a country, a thing always wonderful to me.  By that means
the family learned more of the Master's favour with the Prince, and
the ground it was said to stand on:  for by a strange condescension
in a man so proud - only that he was a man still more ambitious -
he was said to have crept into notability by truckling to the
Irish.  Sir Thomas Sullivan, Colonel Burke and the rest, were his
daily comrades, by which course he withdrew himself from his own
country-folk.  All the small intrigues he had a hand in fomenting;
thwarted my Lord George upon a thousand points; was always for the
advice that seemed palatable to the Prince, no matter if it was
good or bad; and seems upon the whole (like the gambler he was all
through life) to have had less regard to the chances of the
campaign than to the greatness of favour he might aspire to, if, by
any luck, it should succeed.  For the rest, he did very well in the
field; no one questioned that; for he was no coward.

The next was the news of Culloden, which was brought to Durrisdeer
by one of the tenants' sons - the only survivor, he declared, of
all those that had gone singing up the hill.  By an unfortunate
chance John Paul and Macconochie had that very morning found the
guinea piece - which was the root of all the evil - sticking in a
holly bush; they had been "up the gait," as the servants say at
Durrisdeer, to the change-house; and if they had little left of the
guinea, they had less of their wits.  What must John Paul do but
burst into the hall where the family sat at dinner, and cry the
news to them that "Tam Macmorland was but new lichtit at the door,
and - wirra, wirra - there were nane to come behind him"?

They took the word in silence like folk condemned; only Mr. Henry
carrying his palm to his face, and Miss Alison laying her head
outright upon her hands.  As for my lord, he was like ashes.

"I have still one son," says he.  "And, Henry, I will do you this
justice - it is the kinder that is left."

It was a strange thing to say in such a moment; but my lord had
never forgotten Mr. Henry's speech, and he had years of injustice
on his conscience.  Still it was a strange thing, and more than
Miss Alison could let pass.  She broke out and blamed my lord for
his unnatural words, and Mr. Henry because he was sitting there in
safety when his brother lay dead, and herself because she had given
her sweetheart ill words at his departure, calling him the flower
of the flock, wringing her hands, protesting her love, and crying
on him by his name - so that the servants stood astonished.

Mr. Henry got to his feet, and stood holding his chair.  It was he
that was like ashes now.

"Oh!" he burst out suddenly, "I know you loved him."

"The world knows that, glory be to God!" cries she; and then to Mr.
Henry:  "There is none but me to know one thing - that you were a
traitor to him in your heart."

"God knows," groans he, "it was lost love on both sides."

Time went by in the house after that without much change; only they
were now three instead of four, which was a perpetual reminder of
their loss.  Miss Alison's money, you are to bear in mind, wag
highly needful for the estates; and the one brother being dead, my
old lord soon set his heart upon her marrying the other.  Day in,
day out, he would work upon her, sitting by the chimney-side with
his finger in his Latin book, and his eyes set upon her face with a
kind of pleasant intentness that became the old gentleman very
well.  If she wept, he would condole with her like an ancient man
that has seen worse times and begins to think lightly even of
sorrow; if she raged, he would fall to reading again in his Latin
book, but always with some civil excuse; if she offered, as she
often did, to let them have her money in a gift, he would show her
how little it consisted with his honour, and remind her, even if he
should consent, that Mr. Henry would certainly refuse.  NON VI SED
SAEPE CADENDO was a favourite word of his; and no doubt this quiet
persecution wore away much of her resolve; no doubt, besides, he
had a great influence on the girl, having stood in the place of
both her parents; and, for that matter, she was herself filled with
the spirit of the Duries, and would have gone a great way for the
glory of Durrisdeer; but not so far, I think, as to marry my poor
patron, had it not been - strangely enough - for the circumstance
of his extreme unpopularity.

This was the work of Tam Macmorland.  There was not much harm in
Tam; but he had that grievous weakness, a long tongue; and as the
only man in that country who had been out - or, rather, who had
come in again - he was sure of listeners.  Those that have the
underhand in any fighting, I have observed, are ever anxious to
persuade themselves they were betrayed.  By Tam's account of it,
the rebels had been betrayed at every turn and by every officer
they had; they had been betrayed at Derby, and betrayed at Falkirk;
the night march was a step of treachery of my Lord George's; and
Culloden was lost by the treachery of the Macdonalds.  This habit
of imputing treason grew upon the fool, till at last he must have
in Mr. Henry also.  Mr. Henry (by his account) had betrayed the
lads of Durrisdeer; he had promised to follow with more men, and
instead of that he had ridden to King George.  "Ay, and the next
day!" Tam would cry.  "The puir bonnie Master, and the puir, kind
lads that rade wi' him, were hardly ower the scaur, or he was aff -
the Judis!  Ay, weel - he has his way o't:  he's to be my lord, nae
less, and there's mony a cold corp amang the Hieland heather!"  And
at this, if Tam had been drinking, he would begin to weep.

Let anyone speak long enough, he will get believers.  This view of
Mr. Henry's behaviour crept about the country by little and little;
it was talked upon by folk that knew the contrary, but were short
of topics; and it was heard and believed and given out for gospel
by the ignorant and the ill-willing.  Mr. Henry began to be
shunned; yet awhile, and the commons began to murmur as he went by,
and the women (who are always the most bold because they are the
most safe) to cry out their reproaches to his face.  The Master was
cried up for a saint.  It was remembered how he had never any hand
in pressing the tenants; as, indeed, no more he had, except to
spend the money.  He was a little wild perhaps, the folk said; but
how much better was a natural, wild lad that would soon have
settled down, than a skinflint and a sneckdraw, sitting, with his
nose in an account book, to persecute poor tenants!  One trollop,
who had had a child to the Master, and by all accounts been very
badly used, yet made herself a kind of champion of his memory.  She
flung a stone one day at Mr. Henry.

"Whaur's the bonnie lad that trustit ye?" she cried.

Mr. Henry reined in his horse and looked upon her, the blood
flowing from his lip.  "Ay, Jess?" says he.  "You too?  And yet ye
should ken me better."  For it was he who had helped her with
money.

The woman had another stone ready, which she made as if she would
cast; and he, to ward himself, threw up the hand that held his
riding-rod.

"What, would ye beat a lassie, ye ugly - ?" cries she, and ran away
screaming as though he had struck her.

Next day word went about the country like wildfire that Mr. Henry
had beaten Jessie Broun within an inch of her life.  I give it as
one instance of how this snowball grew, and one calumny brought
another; until my poor patron was so perished in reputation that he
began to keep the house like my lord.  All this while, you may be
very sure, he uttered no complaints at home; the very ground of the
scandal was too sore a matter to be handled; and Mr. Henry was very
proud and strangely obstinate in silence.  My old lord must have
heard of it, by John Paul, if by no one else; and he must at least
have remarked the altered habits of his son.  Yet even he, it is
probable, knew not how high the feeling ran; and as for Miss
Alison, she was ever the last person to hear news, and the least
interested when she heard them.

In the height of the ill-feeling (for it died away as it came, no
man could say why) there was an election forward in the town of St.
Bride's, which is the next to Durrisdeer, standing on the Water of
Swift; some grievance was fermenting, I forget what, if ever I
heard; and it was currently said there would be broken heads ere
night, and that the sheriff had sent as far as Dumfries for
soldiers.  My lord moved that Mr. Henry should be present, assuring
him it was necessary to appear, for the credit of the house.  "It
will soon be reported," said he, "that we do not take the lead in
our own country."

"It is a strange lead that I can take," said Mr. Henry; and when
they had pushed him further, "I tell you the plain truth," he said,
"I dare not show my face."

"You are the first of the house that ever said so," cries Miss
Alison.

"We will go all three," said my lord; and sure enough he got into
his boots (the first time in four years - a sore business John Paul
had to get them on), and Miss Alison into her riding-coat, and all
three rode together to St. Bride's.

The streets were full of the rift-raff of all the countryside, who
had no sooner clapped eyes on Mr. Henry than the hissing began, and
the hooting, and the cries of "Judas!" and "Where was the Master?"
and "Where were the poor lads that rode with him?"  Even a stone
was cast; but the more part cried shame at that, for my old lord's
sake, and Miss Alison's.  It took not ten minutes to persuade my
lord that Mr. Henry had been right.  He said never a word, but
turned his horse about, and home again, with his chin upon his
bosom.  Never a word said Miss Alison; no doubt she thought the
more; no doubt her pride was stung, for she was a bone-bred Durie;
and no doubt her heart was touched to see her cousin so unjustly
used.  That night she was never in bed; I have often blamed my lady
- when I call to mind that night, I readily forgive her all; and
the first thing in the morning she came to the old lord in his
usual seat.

"If Henry still wants me," said she, "he can have me now."  To
himself she had a different speech:  "I bring you no love, Henry;
but God knows, all the pity in the world."

June the 1st, 1748, was the day of their marriage.  It was December
of the same year that first saw me alighting at the doors of the
great house; and from there I take up the history of events as they
befell under my own observation, like a witness in a court.



CHAPTER II.  SUMMARY OF EVENTS (continued)



I made the last of my journey in the cold end of December, in a
mighty dry day of frost, and who should be my guide but Patey
Macmorland, brother of Tam!  For a tow-headed, bare-legged brat of
ten, he had more ill tales upon his tongue than ever I heard the
match of; having drunken betimes in his brother's cup.  I was still
not so old myself; pride had not yet the upper hand of curiosity;
and indeed it would have taken any man, that cold morning, to hear
all the old clashes of the country, and be shown all the places by
the way where strange things had fallen out.  I had tales of
Claverhouse as we came through the bogs, and tales of the devil, as
we came over the top of the scaur.  As we came in by the abbey I
heard somewhat of the old monks, and more of the freetraders, who
use its ruins for a magazine, landing for that cause within a
cannon-shot of Durrisdeer; and along all the road the Duries and
poor Mr. Henry were in the first rank of slander.  My mind was thus
highly prejudiced against the family I was about to serve, so that
I was half surprised when I beheld Durrisdeer itself, lying in a
pretty, sheltered bay, under the Abbey Hill; the house most
commodiously built in the French fashion, or perhaps Italianate,
for I have no skill in these arts; and the place the most
beautified with gardens, lawns, shrubberies, and trees I had ever
seen.  The money sunk here unproductively would have quite restored
the family; but as it was, it cost a revenue to keep it up.

Mr. Henry came himself to the door to welcome me:  a tall dark
young gentleman (the Duries are all black men) of a plain and not
cheerful face, very strong in body, but not so strong in health:
taking me by the hand without any pride, and putting me at home
with plain kind speeches.  He led me into the hall, booted as I
was, to present me to my lord.  It was still daylight; and the
first thing I observed was a lozenge of clear glass in the midst of
the shield in the painted window, which I remember thinking a
blemish on a room otherwise so handsome, with its family portraits,
and the pargeted ceiling with pendants, and the carved chimney, in
one corner of which my old lord sat reading in his Livy.  He was
like Mr. Henry, with much the same plain countenance, only more
subtle and pleasant, and his talk a thousand times more
entertaining.  He had many questions to ask me, I remember, of
Edinburgh College, where I had just received my mastership of arts,
and of the various professors, with whom and their proficiency he
seemed well acquainted; and thus, talking of things that I knew, I
soon got liberty of speech in my new home.

In the midst of this came Mrs. Henry into the room; she was very
far gone, Miss Katharine being due in about six weeks, which made
me think less of her beauty at the first sight; and she used me
with more of condescension than the rest; so that, upon all
accounts, I kept her in the third place of my esteem.

It did not take long before all Patey Macmorland's tales were
blotted out of my belief, and I was become, what I have ever since
remained, a loving servant of the house of Durrisdeer.  Mr. Henry
had the chief part of my affection.  It was with him I worked; and
I found him an exacting master, keeping all his kindness for those
hours in which we were unemployed, and in the steward's office not
only loading me with work, but viewing me with a shrewd
supervision.  At length one day he looked up from his paper with a
kind of timidness, and says he, "Mr. Mackellar, I think I ought to
tell you that you do very well."  That was my first word of
commendation; and from that day his jealousy of my performance was
relaxed; soon it was "Mr. Mackellar" here, and "Mr. Mackellar"
there, with the whole family; and for much of my service at
Durrisdeer, I have transacted everything at my own time, and to my
own fancy, and never a farthing challenged.  Even while he was
driving me, I had begun to find my heart go out to Mr. Henry; no
doubt, partly in pity, he was a man so palpably unhappy.  He would
fall into a deep muse over our accounts, staring at the page or out
of the window; and at those times the look of his face, and the
sigh that would break from him, awoke in me strong feelings of
curiosity and commiseration.  One day, I remember, we were late
upon some business in the steward's room.

This room is in the top of the house, and has a view upon the bay,
and over a little wooded cape, on the long sands; and there, right
over against the sun, which was then dipping, we saw the
freetraders, with a great force of men and horses, scouring on the
beach.  Mr. Henry had been staring straight west, so that I
marvelled he was not blinded by the sun; suddenly he frowns, rubs
his hand upon his brow, and turns to me with a smile.

"You would not guess what I was thinking," says he.  "I was
thinking I would be a happier man if I could ride and run the
danger of my life, with these lawless companions."

I told him I had observed he did not enjoy good spirits; and that
it was a common fancy to envy others and think we should be the
better of some change; quoting Horace to the point, like a young
man fresh from college.

"Why, just so," said he.  "And with that we may get back to our
accounts."

It was not long before I began to get wind of the causes that so
much depressed him.  Indeed a blind man must have soon discovered
there was a shadow on that house, the shadow of the Master of
Ballantrae.  Dead or alive (and he was then supposed to be dead)
that man was his brother's rival:  his rival abroad, where there
was never a good word for Mr. Henry, and nothing but regret and
praise for the Master; and his rival at home, not only with his
father and his wife, but with the very servants.

They were two old serving-men that were the leaders.  John Paul, a
little, bald, solemn, stomachy man, a great professor of piety and
(take him for all in all) a pretty faithful servant, was the chief
of the Master's faction.  None durst go so far as John.  He took a
pleasure in disregarding Mr. Henry publicly, often with a slighting
comparison.  My lord and Mrs. Henry took him up, to be sure, but
never so resolutely as they should; and he had only to pull his
weeping face and begin his lamentations for the Master - "his
laddie," as he called him - to have the whole condoned.  As for
Henry, he let these things pass in silence, sometimes with a sad
and sometimes with a black look.  There was no rivalling the dead,
he knew that; and how to censure an old serving-man for a fault of
loyalty, was more than he could see.  His was not the tongue to do
it.

Macconochie was chief upon the other side; an old, ill-spoken,
swearing, ranting, drunken dog; and I have often thought it an odd
circumstance in human nature that these two serving-men should each
have been the champion of his contrary, and blackened their own
faults and made light of their own virtues when they beheld them in
a master.  Macconochie had soon smelled out my secret inclination,
took me much into his confidence, and would rant against the Master
by the hour, so that even my work suffered.  "They're a' daft
here," he would cry, "and be damned to them!  The Master - the
deil's in their thrapples that should call him sae! it's Mr. Henry
should be master now!  They were nane sae fond o' the Master when
they had him, I'll can tell ye that.  Sorrow on his name!  Never a
guid word did I hear on his lips, nor naebody else, but just
fleering and flyting and profane cursing - deil hae him!  There's
nane kent his wickedness:  him a gentleman!  Did ever ye hear tell,
Mr. Mackellar, o' Wully White the wabster?  No?  Aweel, Wully was
an unco praying kind o' man; a dreigh body, nane o' my kind, I
never could abide the sight o' him; onyway he was a great hand by
his way of it, and he up and rebukit the Master for some of his on-
goings.  It was a grand thing for the Master o' Ball'ntrae to tak
up a feud wi' a' wabster, wasnae't?"  Macconochie would sneer;
indeed, he never took the full name upon his lips but with a sort
of a whine of hatred.  "But he did!  A fine employ it was:
chapping at the man's door, and crying 'boo' in his lum, and
puttin' poother in his fire, and pee-oys (1) in his window; till
the man thocht it was auld Hornie was come seekin' him.  Weel, to
mak a lang story short, Wully gaed gyte.  At the hinder end, they
couldnae get him frae his knees, but he just roared and prayed and
grat straucht on, till he got his release.  It was fair murder,
a'body said that.  Ask John Paul - he was brawly ashamed o' that
game, him that's sic a Christian man!  Grand doin's for the Master
o' Ball'ntrae!"  I asked him what the Master had thought of it
himself.  "How would I ken?" says he.  "He never said naething."
And on again in his usual manner of banning and swearing, with
every now and again a "Master of Ballantrae" sneered through his
nose.  It was in one of these confidences that he showed me the
Carlisle letter, the print of the horse-shoe still stamped in the
paper.  Indeed, that was our last confidence; for he then expressed
himself so ill-naturedly of Mrs. Henry that I had to reprimand him
sharply, and must thenceforth hold him at a distance.

My old lord was uniformly kind to Mr. Henry; he had even pretty
ways of gratitude, and would sometimes clap him on the shoulder and
say, as if to the world at large:  "This is a very good son to me."
And grateful he was, no doubt, being a man of sense and justice.
But I think that was all, and I am sure Mr. Henry thought so.  The
love was all for the dead son.  Not that this was often given
breath to; indeed, with me but once.  My lord had asked me one day
how I got on with Mr. Henry, and I had told him the truth.

"Ay," said he, looking sideways on the burning fire, "Henry is a
good lad, a very good lad," said he.  "You have heard, Mr.
Mackellar, that I had another son?  I am afraid he was not so
virtuous a lad as Mr. Henry; but dear me, he's dead, Mr. Mackellar!
and while he lived we were all very proud of him, all very proud.
If he was not all he should have been in some ways, well, perhaps
we loved him better!"  This last he said looking musingly in the
fire; and then to me, with a great deal of briskness, "But I am
rejoiced you do so well with Mr. Henry.  You will find him a good
master."  And with that he opened his book, which was the customary
signal of dismission.  But it would be little that he read, and
less that he understood; Culloden field and the Master, these would
be the burthen of his thought; and the burthen of mine was an
unnatural jealousy of the dead man for Mr. Henry's sake, that had
even then begun to grow on me.

I am keeping Mrs. Henry for the last, so that this expression of my
sentiment may seem unwarrantably strong:  the reader shall judge
for himself when I have done.  But I must first tell of another
matter, which was the means of bringing me more intimate.  I had
not yet been six months at Durrisdeer when it chanced that John
Paul fell sick and must keep his bed; drink was the root of his
malady, in my poor thought; but he was tended, and indeed carried
himself, like an afflicted saint; and the very minister, who came
to visit him, professed himself edified when he went away.  The
third morning of his sickness, Mr. Henry comes to me with something
of a hang-dog look.

"Mackellar," says he, "I wish I could trouble you upon a little
service.  There is a pension we pay; it is John's part to carry it,
and now that he is sick I know not to whom I should look unless it
was yourself.  The matter is very delicate; I could not carry it
with my own hand for a sufficient reason; I dare not send
Macconochie, who is a talker, and I am - I have - I am desirous
this should not come to Mrs. Henry's ears," says he, and flushed to
his neck as he said it.

To say truth, when I found I was to carry money to one Jessie
Broun, who was no better than she should be, I supposed it was some
trip of his own that Mr. Henry was dissembling.  I was the more
impressed when the truth came out.

It was up a wynd off a side street in St. Bride's that Jessie had
her lodging.  The place was very ill inhabited, mostly by the
freetrading sort.  There was a man with a broken head at the entry;
half-way up, in a tavern, fellows were roaring and singing, though
it was not yet nine in the day.  Altogether, I had never seen a
worse neighbourhood, even in the great city of Edinburgh, and I was
in two minds to go back.  Jessie's room was of a piece with her
surroundings, and herself no better.  She would not give me the
receipt (which Mr. Henry had told me to demand, for he was very
methodical) until she had sent out for spirits, and I had pledged
her in a glass; and all the time she carried on in a light-headed,
reckless way - now aping the manners of a lady, now breaking into
unseemly mirth, now making coquettish advances that oppressed me to
the ground.  Of the money she spoke more tragically.

"It's blood money!" said she; "I take it for that:  blood money for
the betrayed!  See what I'm brought down to!  Ah, if the bonnie lad
were back again, it would be changed days.  But he's deid - he's
lyin' deid amang the Hieland hills - the bonnie lad, the bonnie
lad!"

She had a rapt manner of crying on the bonnie lad, clasping her
hands and casting up her eyes, that I think she must have learned
of strolling players; and I thought her sorrow very much of an
affectation, and that she dwelled upon the business because her
shame was now all she had to be proud of.  I will not say I did not
pity her, but it was a loathing pity at the best; and her last
change of manner wiped it out.  This was when she had had enough of
me for an audience, and had set her name at last to the receipt.
"There!" says she, and taking the most unwomanly oaths upon her
tongue, bade me begone and carry it to the Judas who had sent me.
It was the first time I had heard the name applied to Mr. Henry; I
was staggered besides at her sudden vehemence of word and manner,
and got forth from the room, under this shower of curses, like a
beaten dog.  But even then I was not quit, for the vixen threw up
her window, and, leaning forth, continued to revile me as I went up
the wynd; the freetraders, coming to the tavern door, joined in the
mockery, and one had even the inhumanity to set upon me a very
savage small dog, which bit me in the ankle.  This was a strong
lesson, had I required one, to avoid ill company; and I rode home
in much pain from the bite and considerable indignation of mind.

Mr. Henry was in the steward's room, affecting employment, but I
could see he was only impatient to hear of my errand.

"Well?" says he, as soon as I came in; and when I had told him
something of what passed, and that Jessie seemed an undeserving
woman and far from grateful:  "She is no friend to me," said he;
"but, indeed, Mackellar, I have few friends to boast of, and Jessie
has some cause to be unjust.  I need not dissemble what all the
country knows:  she was not very well used by one of our family."
This was the first time I had heard him refer to the Master even
distantly; and I think he found his tongue rebellious even for that
much, but presently he resumed - "This is why I would have nothing
said.  It would give pain to Mrs. Henry . . . and to my father," he
added, with another flush.

"Mr. Henry," said I, "if you will take a freedom at my hands, I
would tell you to let that woman be.  What service is your money to
the like of her?  She has no sobriety and no economy - as for
gratitude, you will as soon get milk from a whinstone; and if you
will pretermit your bounty, it will make no change at all but just
to save the ankles of your messengers."

Mr. Henry smiled.  "But I am grieved about your ankle," said he,
the next moment, with a proper gravity.

"And observe," I continued, "I give you this advice upon
consideration; and yet my heart was touched for the woman in the
beginning."

"Why, there it is, you see!" said Mr. Henry.  "And you are to
remember that I knew her once a very decent lass.  Besides which,
although I speak little of my family, I think much of its repute."

And with that he broke up the talk, which was the first we had
together in such confidence.  But the same afternoon I had the
proof that his father was perfectly acquainted with the business,
and that it was only from his wife that Mr. Henry kept it secret.

"I fear you had a painful errand to-day," says my lord to me, "for
which, as it enters in no way among your duties, I wish to thank
you, and to remind you at the same time (in case Mr. Henry should
have neglected) how very desirable it is that no word of it should
reach my daughter.  Reflections on the dead, Mr. Mackellar, are
doubly painful."

Anger glowed in my heart; and I could have told my lord to his face
how little he had to do, bolstering up the image of the dead in
Mrs. Henry's heart, and how much better he were employed to shatter
that false idol; for by this time I saw very well how the land lay
between my patron and his wife.

My pen is clear enough to tell a plain tale; but to render the
effect of an infinity of small things, not one great enough in
itself to be narrated; and to translate the story of looks, and the
message of voices when they are saying no great matter; and to put
in half a page the essence of near eighteen months - this is what I
despair to accomplish.  The fault, to be very blunt, lay all in
Mrs. Henry.  She felt it a merit to have consented to the marriage,
and she took it like a martyrdom; in which my old lord, whether he
knew it or not, fomented her.  She made a merit, besides, of her
constancy to the dead, though its name, to a nicer conscience,
should have seemed rather disloyalty to the living; and here also
my lord gave her his countenance.  I suppose he was glad to talk of
his loss, and ashamed to dwell on it with Mr. Henry.  Certainly, at
least, he made a little coterie apart in that family of three, and
it was the husband who was shut out.  It seems it was an old custom
when the family were alone in Durrisdeer, that my lord should take
his wine to the chimney-side, and Miss Alison, instead of
withdrawing, should bring a stool to his knee, and chatter to him
privately; and after she had become my patron's wife the same
manner of doing was continued.  It should have been pleasant to
behold this ancient gentleman so loving with his daughter, but I
was too much a partisan of Mr. Henry's to be anything but wroth at
his exclusion.  Many's the time I have seen him make an obvious
resolve, quit the table, and go and join himself to his wife and my
Lord Durrisdeer; and on their part, they were never backward to
make him welcome, turned to him smilingly as to an intruding child,
and took him into their talk with an effort so ill-concealed that
he was soon back again beside me at the table, whence (so great is
the hall of Durrisdeer) we could but hear the murmur of voices at
the chimney.  There he would sit and watch, and I along with him;
and sometimes by my lord's head sorrowfully shaken, or his hand
laid on Mrs. Henry's head, or hers upon his knee as if in
consolation, or sometimes by an exchange of tearful looks, we would
draw our conclusion that the talk had gone to the old subject and
the shadow of the dead was in the hall.

I have hours when I blame Mr. Henry for taking all too patiently;
yet we are to remember he was married in pity, and accepted his
wife upon that term.  And, indeed, he had small encouragement to
make a stand.  Once, I remember, he announced he had found a man to
replace the pane of the stained window, which, as it was he that
managed all the business, was a thing clearly within his
attributions.  But to the Master's fancies, that pane was like a
relic; and on the first word of any change, the blood flew to Mrs.
Henry's face.